Girl Guides of Canada (and Scouts Canada) is awesome for your kids. I’m speaking from a Girl Guiding perspective as I’m a Guider and very familiar with the program.
Why is Guides so good for your kids? It’s because kids will sometimes fail. Sometimes they’ll have to do extra work to get a badge. Sometimes they have to do things that are uncomfortable or unfamiliar to them. Sometimes it might be slightly risky. How on earth could something that sounds so negative be so good for kids?
Learning to fail and what to do when you fail is an excellent life skill, it teach’s children resilience and pride. It teaches them that sometimes you have to work and hard in order to achieve something. Guiding does not set out to fail children, we set out to challenge them. Making mistakes and stretching comfort zones are big part of that process. And sometimes kids aren’t ready for whatever activity we are doing and they fail. The great thing is there’s always another chance to try again. Some activities we do carry an element of risk. By participating in managed risky activities and learning to evaluate their choices, kids learn limits.
One great example of both of these principals is fire starting. We encourage our Brownies (7-8) to start to learn fire starting in a safe way. This is exactly opposite of the fire department tour where the fire fighters told the Brownies they were to never touch matches. Why were they told not to? Because of the risk they may start a fire.
We start to teach the girls before we even leave for camp. The first thing they learn is to evaluate the situation to see if it’s safe to light a fire. Is there an adult present and engaged? Is there a fire pit? Are there people running around? Is your hair tied back? Are you wearing the correct clothing? Do you have a bucket of water? Where is your shovel? All of these questions have to be answered correctly first. By learning the questions we empower the Brownies to start thinking before they act. Brownies are not encouraged to light fires without an adult present but they are taught they don’t need to be afraid of trying something many people consider beyond their age group. At the same time a Brownie who is not paying attention or is creating an unsafe environment won’t be able to participate and they will fail that portion of program until they are ready to learn.
At camp fire lighting is a controlled and highly supervised activity. I’m not about to let 13, 7 year old girls run around with matches. One by one they’ll try lighting a match and putting it into our prepared fire-pit. There are no second chances on the day if the girl is being unsafe. After they’ve all successfully lit a match the leaders show them how to build a fire and where the matches go in order to have a successful fire lightning (and sometimes it takes us more than one match to get it going!). At the end of the night we get them to help us make sure the fire is out and reinforce fire safety and why we never walk away until we are sure the campfire is out. The girls feel a real sense of pride and accomplishment in learning this skill and the ones who aren’t ready or are unsafe always ask when they’ll have another chance to try again.
Fire lighting is just one example of the many activities that guiding does that take your children beyond the classroom and teaches them how to push their limits. Go ahead and enrol your children in a program where there is a chance they will learn something more than their peers. Where they will have to learn to do things that might be slightly scary. You’ll end up with a more confident and capable adult in the end.